ASK DR. SCHUND
(C)1992 Alan M. Schwartz
Dr. Schund, is it true that the First World's winning of the Cold
War, the Peace Dividend assuring prosperity for all, and
President Bush's New World Order enforcing a kinder and gentler
future for everyone, are all contingent upon a new weapon
recently evolved from within Department of Defense Black Labs?
International intelligence operatives, adept hirelings of the
most powerful and pervasive media, and fourteen year old computer
hackers have for years luxuriated in the revelations of Top
Secret/Lotus Eater-classified Pentagon research documentation.
Calling a Bulgarian peasant a techno-spy rarely generated the
desired bottom line, so official Pentagon leaks were frequent and
voluminous, filling pages of "The Enquirer," "Popular Science,"
and even some technical journals. Courtesy of public domain
disclosures, we now read between the lines to voyage beyond
tomorrow to "Science" 256(5063) 1531 (1992) and the lethal
wizardry of the Stellar Insurferator.
A 2000 pound blockbuster is a half ton of military high explosive
in a half ton steel casing. In pursuing this route we soon
design a bomb too heavy to be delivered. The violence of
chemistry is superseded by the devastation of physics, hence the
fission bomb. The mechanism of fission warheads limits their
yield to that of a few hundred thousand tons of TNT, hence the
progression to fusion warheads. Hydrogen bombs have been formed
to one hundred million tons TNT equivalent - the weight of an ice
cube 1660 feet long, wide and high. Boom!
Ocean water is loaded with hydrogen and touches all but about ten
of the almost 200 nations of this planet. Would it not make more
sense to selectively turn the ocean into a weapon of mass
destruction instead of weathering all the noisome complications
attendant to manufacturing, storing, and accurately delivering an
infernal device? Imagine the opportunities for meaningful
diplomacy and international blackmail! America's destiny was
clearly delineated. Pentagon managers collected their most
extreme nerds, geeks and propellerheads; fueled them with pizza
and beer; threw in a handful of adult magazines; and sent them on
a mission to preserve truth, justice and the American way! Money
went in, progress reports came out, and nothing much happened.
The violent convulsions of a pulsating star's atmosphere, Mach 8
shockwaves boosting tortured matter to temperatures of 100,000
degrees and higher, are described by a surprisingly spare set of
equations. Horizontal velocity, surface elevation, normalized
density, pressure, and propagation speed permute and combine to
describe these spatially stupendous and most violent of phenomena
with remarkable accuracy and predictive power. Ocean waves
impinging upon a beach are similarly modeled with horizontal
velocity, surface elevation, normalized depth, pressure, and
propagation speed. It was close enough for Dr. Milton Poswilly.
Milton Poswilly was a skinny astrophysicist under DoD contract in
La Jolla, California who had embezzled eight years of research
grants for supercomputer modeling of the perfect wave in pursuit
of his surfing passions. An FBI subpoena was delivered charging
him with felonies and misdemeanors sufficient to contain the rest
of his life within a Federal penitentiary. The sudden surge of
his adrenal glands screaming in the night as the working end of a
9mm Beretta semi-automatic was shoved into his mouth forged the
connection between stellar atmospheric density and ocean wave
depth. The equations of state for pulsating white hot stars and
salt water lazily lapping upon sandy beaches were identical!
Twist this coefficient and twiddle with that one. Renormalize
density to depth. Use the Lax-Wendroff numerical method of shock
capture to invert energy dissipation to uncontrolled exponential
growth. Do not hang ten toes. Hang ten gigatons! The TNT ice
cube was now 7708 feet long, wide and high. This was christened
the Stellar Insurferator. This was gnarly progress! (Poswilly
was gang-raped to death in Joliet.)
Physicists wondered what would control the Stellar Insurferator
once it began to shoot the tube. Those who wondered too loudly
evaporated in the interests of National Security. A brief
meeting was held with Russian representatives after the Stellar
Insurferator was demonstrated using a single human tear at
Chernoble. The Russian Empire toppled. Environmentalists were
livid with rage! Would vaporizing India from Bombay to Hyderabad
hurt dolphins? President Bush journeyed to the Rio de Janeiro
Environmental Conference and stared down lawmakers empowered to
oppress five billion people, telling them to go gargle with salt
water. Danny Quayle shot three under par!
When next you vacation at the seashore, contemplate the exquisite
wonder of two thirds the Earth's surface abruptly transforming
into a howling thermonuclear firestorm. One day surf may be up
to Mach 8 and 100,000 degrees. Remember to wear your sunscreen!